The Makropulos Case version 2, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 28 2010

Today’s final performance of The Makropulos Case continued to maintain the very high standards of the dress rehearsal and the performance of Nov. 24. Karita Mattila dominated the stage as Emilia Marty with her singing and particularly her acting; Gerd Grochowski again made his mark as a very impressive Baron Prus. I was delighted to see in the program notes that we will see him again soon, as Gunther in San Francisco’s 2011 Ring. And again, a well-deserved standing ovation for Mattila at curtain call. After her bows, she bestowed the one-cheek/other-cheek European style double kiss on each of her fellow cast members. Another alpha for the books. A candidate for my “top ten” list, which only admits new members after a period of time to see whether I keep asking people “Did you see Karita Mattila in The Makropulos Case in 2010?”

Tosca version 2, Opera San Jose, Nov. 26 2010

We saw the penultimate performance of Tosca, given by the opposite cast from the opening night cast, with Rebecca Davis as Tosca, Christopher Bengochea as Cavaradossi, and Torlef Borsting as Scarpia. Krassen Karagiozov and Isaiah Musik-Ayala repeated the roles of Angelotti and the sacristan, respectively. They were again in fine voice, Karagiozov in particular. His singing seems to have grown some considerable heft in the lower register. Davis demonstrated the virtues that led to her selection into San Francisco Opera’s Merola program. Bengochea seemed to be having an off night: his voice sounded husky and strained. Has his recent illness and weight loss affected his singing? Borsting lacked the impact that Silas Elash had in the other cast, seen the previous week. A marginal beta.

The Makropulos Case, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 24 2010

Karita Mattila gave an absolutely riveting performance as Emilia Marty in Janacek’s penultimate opera, The Makropulos Case, in San Francisco. I had seen the dress rehearsal, and was so tremendously impressed by the entire effort that when a front-row orchestra seat became available I snapped it up, even though my wife and I have yet to attend our regular series performance.

During the prelude, we get an advance peek at the sets for all three acts as the turntable slowly rotates. Act I consists of a very tall wall that curves away from us; inset into the wall are the bookshelves called for in the stage directions, with a ladder on the right for access to their higher levels. At stage level, there is a lawyer's wooden desk and various easy chairs. Legal books and papers are piled high on the desk and on the floor. On the wall is a giant clock. At the dress rehearsal it displayed the current time; at the performance it was about a half-hour fast. Its purpose is to remind us all of time slowly ticking away. The “wallpaper” was cross-hatched black stripes on a white background, more dense in some places than others. The entire effect was monochromatic. In Act II we see a stage curtain painted on another curved black-and-white cross-hatched surface; the stage curtain curves toward us. There is a sofa and a make-up table with lighted mirror that is wheeled in early in the act. Act III presents a bed supporting Emilia Marty and Baron Prus. Behind them a rising walkway curves out of sight. The left side of the walkway is the reverse side of the wall of bookshelves from Act I, while the right side of the walkway is the reverse side of the stage curtain of Act II. The black-and-white cross-hatching persists.

Karita Mattila is performing the role of Emilia Marty for the first time in her career. Her singing and her acting were first-rate in all respects. Her performance was so polished, it’s hard to believe that this is her first time out. It’s also hard to believe that she just turned 50. This ought to be her signature role.

She was supported by a fine cast:
Albert Gregor: Miro Dvorsky
Baron Jaroslav Prus: Gerd Grochowski
Dr. Kolenaty: Dale Travis
Vitek: Thomas Glenn
Kristina: Susannah Biller
Count Hauk-Šendorf: Matthew O’Neill
Janek: Brian Jagde
A Stagehand: Austin Kness
A Chambermaid, A Cleaning Woman: Maya Lahyani
Of these, Gerd Grochowski deserves special mention for his round, full, well-projected baritone.

At the curtain call, enthusiastic applause, with a few standing. When Mattila appeared, everyone rose, and deservedly so. Clearly an alpha.

Xerxes, Berkeley West Edge Opera, Nov. 21 2010

Opera San Jose presented Handel’s Xerxes several years ago, and I confess that I remembered very little of it. I did remember that Amastre loves Xerxes, who has got the hots for Romilda, who is in love with Arsamene, who returns her love; meanwhile, Atalanta is smitten with Arsamene. As our excellent pre-performance speaker (John Prescott) said, if you are going to have a comedy, what’s better than a love triangle? Two love triangles!

Xerxes is one of just a few Handel comedies, and Berkeley West Edge took that idea and ran with it, with lots of inventive stage business. Just one example: during an orchestral interlude, Arsamene and Romilda strip down to their skivvies, hop under the covers, and a lot of ill-defined “action” takes place under the covers. After a little bit of this, who should appear from under the bed but Atalanta, with a pair of very wide eyes.

The sets were simple, consisting of a wire-frame tree (in two dimensions) to which Xerxes can sing “Ombrai mai fu” and later hang photos of Romilda on, and a bed that keeps getting rolled on and off the stage. Add a framed bedroom window that can drop down from on high, and a couple of stepladders next to the window, and a collection of silhouettes of triremes to form Xerxes’s bridge across the Hellespont, and that’s all.

Our cast:
Xerxes: Paula Rasmussen
Romilda: Angela Cadelago
Arsamene: Ryan Belongie
Atalanta: Anna Slate
Amastre: Sonia Gariaeff
Elviro: Donald Sherrill
Ariodate: Roger McCracken
Of these, the two lovers Romilda and Arsamene were the standouts. Angela Cadelago sang beautifully, and looked as good as she sang, while Ryan Belongie made a strong argument for using a countertenor rather than a mezzo. Sonia Gariaeff, who has made quite an impression the few other times I have heard her, had a fairly small part; I would have liked to have heard more of her.

Bottom line, a delightful presentation of an instance of a genre that I’ve not yet come to fully appreciate—a beta.

Tosca, Opera San Jose, Nov. 18 2010

I have very much enjoyed researching the background of Tosca (the Roman Republic, the Battle of Marengo, the original Victorien Sardou play La Tosca, etc.) in preparation for giving three of my “potluck preview” talks, and doing so meant that I got more out of this Tosca than ever before. For just one example, remember that the opening to Act III includes the sounds of church bells at dawn. The score marks the bells not as pp or ff, but as vicino (nearby), lontano (distant), molto lontano (very distant), etc. So for the first time, I really listened to the bells—it is a wonderful effect!

The sets were fairly modest without looking cheap. In Act I, there is the requisite statue of the Madonna to the left, and nearby the entrance to the private Attavanti chapel. Center, the sight line goes back to the church wall, with a double door. To the right, a closer wall, with a large painting of the Madonna surrounded by cherubs, and the painter’s scaffold. With the chapel to the left and the painter’s scaffold to the right, not a whole lot of room is left for the chorus to sing the Te Deum. The Act II set has Scarpia’s desk to the left, with several candles on it; behind the desk are the shutters that he can close to shut out the sounds of the cantata from the floor below. To the right, a small writing table in front of the doorway to the torture chamber. Said doorway and entrance is a structure in the room, not just a door in a side wall. In back, again a wall with double doors in the center. Act III has a walkway five feet above stage level, going all the way from left to right, with an angled ramp leading from stage level up to it. In back of the walkway is a brick wall, with cutouts, presumably for cannon. And there is a small statue of St. Michael Archangel, in the same pose as the one atop the real Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome.

The first voice heard is that of Angelotti, the escaped prisoner, expertly sung by Krassen Karagiozov. He was sounding very good that evening. Isaiah Musik-Ayala’s Sacristan was also delightful. It’s good to see Isaiah with a good close shave. Alexander Boyer’s Cavaradossi was good, aside from a badly cracked note in E lucevan le stelle. My studies had revealed that in the Sardou play, Cavaradossi is a freethinker and a Bonapartist, opposed to the government in power; even his mustache contributes to the suspicions about him. I was pleased to see that the director had indeed equipped Alexander with a mustache. Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste sang Tosca. She started out a bit rough in Act I, but cleaned it up as the evening went on. I was particularly looking forward to Silas Elash’s Scarpia. Silas in real life looks to be on the other end of the spectrum from the purely evil Scarpia—but the makeup and costuming departments can do wonders. His Scarpia sounded somewhat more gentle than the most effective Scarpia would be—but I acknowledge that I’ve been deeply into the classic Maria Callas/Giuseppe di Stefano/Tito Gobbi recording from 1953.

One bit of acting/direction that really worked for me was in the middle of Act II. Cavaradossi’s final scream of Ahime! (that leads to Tosca’s spilling the beans) was immediately preceded by Scarpia holding out his arm in the direction of the open door to the torture chamber, with his fingers clenched and his thumb up. As the music grows in intensity, Scarpia brings down his thumb, clearly directing Roberti to tighten the screws even more. Chilling.

There is always the question of how Tosca will actually “jump to her death.” Here, she runs up the ramp, runs to the left along the walkway to meet soldiers entering from the left, reverses course and runs into more soldiers entering from the right, and has no choice but to jump off the walkway through one of the cannon ports. Sorry, but I’m not privy to what she jumped onto. Presumably not a trampoline.

Good singing, good acting, decent sets, fabulous music, goosebumps in places. A solid beta.

Madama Butterfly, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 14 2010

San Francisco Opera’s new production of Madama Butterfly is lovely to look at, but it’s hard to get excited over the remaining aspects. The set consists of the little house on Nagasaki hill with sliding shoji walls and pointed arches, and rafters open to the elements. To one side there is a deck; growing through the deck is a large tree, with leaves larger than fig-tree leaves, leaning over the little house as though it is trying to engulf it, kudzu-like. The little house really does sit on top of a hill, so that the characters need to climb up 6 feet or so to reach the house. In the background there is a diorama of Nagasaki harbor way down below; the little house may be 1000 feet or more above sea level.

The little house and its hill were mounted on a turntable. The unfortunate aspect of the production was that (1) the turntable was overused, there seemed to be too many gratuitous rotations of the turntable (2) the rotation of the turntable was presented as being performed by half a dozen kuroku (black-clad stagehands) pulling on hefty ropes, but the ropes often went slack and the illusion of pulling a weighty object was not well conveyed. Other kuroku served the performance as well, but instead of the appropriate stealthy, I’m-not-really-here motions, their grossly exaggerated stepping motions seemed to want to call attention to them.

Our cast differed from the opening night cast:
Cio-Cio-San: Daniela Dessì
Lt. B. F. Pinkerton: Stefano Secco
Suzuki: Daveda Karanas
Goro: Thomas Glenn
Sharpless: Quinn Kelsey
Prince Yamadori: Austin Kness
The Bonze: Christian Van Horn
Conductor: Julian Kovatchev
The conductor for the first several performances was our esteemed Verdi/Puccini maestro, Nicola Luisotti; I’m sure I would have preferred to have been at one of his performances. I can’t specifically fault anyone for anything, aside from the director who dressed Goro in a straw hat and a checkered vest (maybe he specializes in procuring Japanese women for visiting American sailors?), but the performance fell far short of the bar established a few years ago in the productions with Patricia Racette. I do need to note a few effective directorial touches: we see Suzuki at the opening of Act II praying to her Japanese gods, then we notice that Cio-Cio San has been praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Also, when Pinkerton enters the house, he removes his shoes, Japanese fashion—when Sharpless enters the “Welcome to this American house,” he does not. A beta—but barely.

Don Pasquale, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Nov 13 2010

According to the images projected prior to the beginning of the performance, in 40 years James Levine has conducted nearly 2500 performances of 86 different operas at the Met, but this is his first Don Pasquale. And it is a winner. The sprightly, sparkling overture was just a prelude of things to come, and earned Levine and the orchestra sustained, well-deserved applause, well more than a “Jimmy, we’re glad you’re back after a long absence.” When the curtain went up, we saw Don Pasquale’s cavernous (after all, this is the Met stage) but dilapidated abode, with a sagging bed in the middle, stairs ascending behind the bed, columns and pillars and an entrance way off to the right, the whole festooned with dirty laundry. John Del Carlo sang the title role to perfection; I now understand why one of my companions this morning is a big John Del Carlo fan. Mariusz Kwiecien was an excellent Dr. Malatesta. Ernesto was sung by Matthew Polenzani, who earned one of my few minor reservations about the performance: I heard a bit of a glare in his upper register that didn’t particularly appeal to me. On balance, though, he fit well with the rest of the cast.

We don’t hear a female voice until the second scene, when we are introduced to Norina, reading a book on the balcony of her rooftop apartment overlooking a Tuscan city, and introducing herself to the audience in an aria that functions exactly as does “Una voce poca fa.” Anna Netrebko absolutely shone in this role. When I first saw her following the birth of her child, her voice sounded a shade darker, and she had lost some of her endearing girlish impishness. Here she sang gorgeously, and acted the part of the young woman to the hilt, even doing a somersault into her chaise longue at the end of the scene, and jumping on Don Pasquale’s bed as part of her antics following the signing of the marriage contract. Here the antics went just a bit too far: her kicking him in the behind wasn’t necessary.

Following intermission, we are again in Don Pasquale’s house, but now with dozens of newly-hired (but not yet uniformly attired) servants, and many large packing crates, presumably containing new furniture, and labeled with proper Italian words. The scene ended with an encore of the wonderful Pasquale-Malatesta patter song duet, in front of the curtain, which has been a feature of every other Don Pasquale that I have seen. I finally understood it as (partial) cover for the scene change, which is complicated enough that the curtain remains down for several minutes following the encore. Nevertheless, it is delightful to hear that music again.

The final scene takes place in Don Pasquale’s garden, with a courtyard to the right and the two-story house to the left, with a full-width balcony leading to stairs descending to the garden.

Great music, superb singing, excellent playing, wonderful sets, spirited acting—one could hardly ask for anything more. Clearly an alpha.

Boris Godunov, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Nov 10 2010

I had high hopes for Stephen Wadsworth’s production of Boris Godunov at the Met, seen in the encore performance of Nov. 10, based on his superb Ring for Seattle Opera. Unfortunately, reality fell short of expectations. The sets took the minimalist approach too far. For the coronation scene, we get a flat golden wall with a door. Yes, the golden wall appears to be made out of 1-foot by 3-foot golden plates with a bit of texture, but it’s pretty stark. Pimen and Grigory do without a monk’s cell; the only prop is a gigantic book, with pages about 6 feet square, on which Pimen is writing his history of Russia. Yes, he has to walk on and kneel on the book to write on it, using large characters which I take to be representative of 16th-century Cyrillic. (The book then winds up in every scene following, and people keep walking on it.) The inn at the Lithuanian frontier was a small wall flown in from above with a rude table in front of it, and lots of open space on the rest of the stage. Boris’s mad scene was done with a throne surrounded on four sides with steps up to the throne, rather similar to the stepped pyramid in San Francisco's recent production of Aida. The Polish scene was built around four very rectangular benches arranged in a square. The final three scenes (outside the cathedral with the Holy Fool, the boyars, and the Kromy Forest) featured little more than the large chorus. And of course, the book, which ends up in tatters.

The production could have been redeemed by a stellar performance, but the performance also failed to move me. Much advance notice was made of René Pape’s Boris, but I didn't get much out of it. The remainder of the principals were all Russians. The most impressive performance was given by Andrey Popov as the Holy Fool, notable not so much for the singing (Mussorgky doesn't give him particularly nice music to sing) as for his acting. Wadsworth gave him a significant (mute) role in the first scene. The camera followed him closely, and Popov deserved the attention. In the later scene outside the cathedral, where the children pester him, he wound up crawling into the omnipresent large book and wrapping one of the giant pages around him like a blanket—very effective. Mikhail Petrenko brought a superb bass voice to the role of Pimen, and Vladimir Ognovenko was an effective Varlaam. I didn’t feel that my 4½ hours in the theater had been wasted, but I didn’t get much out of it either. A gamma.

Cyrano de Bergerac, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 6 2010

Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac makes for a nice show but it’s not surprising that it’s not standard repertoire.

The San Francisco Opera production, imported from the Theatre du Chatelet, is perfectly appropriate to the time frame of 1619-1655, the lifespan of the historical Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac. Swords are swords and muskets are muskets. The stage action actually begins several minutes before the music starts, as we see the reverse side of the curtain at the theater of the Hotel de Bourgogne, with stagehands preparing the various props that will be used in the performance-within-the-opera. The curtain goes up, we see the theater-goers at the rear of the stage, and we see the back side of the “clouds” that are drawn across the stage. Montfleury arrives in a fantastic airborne chariot, but it’s a 17th-century fantasy, not a 21st-century fantasy. The bakery of Act II Scene 1 is a rather industrial-scale bakery, with a baker at the second-story level mixing his ingredients in a gigantic copper bowl, while other bakers arrange 3-foot-tall loaves of bread, baked in the shape of human figures, for glazing. Scene 2 brings us Roxane’s home and balcony, perfectly represented in “stone.”

Act III, following the single intermission, presents what appears to be the interior of the fort that is under siege by the Spanish forces. Although the cadets are supposed to be the ones laying siege to Arras, they are the ones that are starving, and the well-fed, well-dressed, vigorous Spanish forces are the ones that come over the wall and massacre the cadets, somehow missing Cyrano as they perform the coup de grace on the fallen bodies. Only in Act IV do we see something not quite authentic. The stage is dominated by a large tree that looks more like a tree than do the aluminum creations in the Werther production of a few weeks ago. Left with only a few large brown leaves, it manages to look more artificial and less real than anything else we've seen so far.

These performances are rumored to be Placido Domingo’s final appearance onstage at San Francisco Opera. His voice remains strong and clear and gives no evidence of being ready for retirement. Ainhoa Arteta (from the Basque region of Spain) as his Roxane was also outstanding. Her Christian, Thiago Arancam (from Brazil) started with a rather pinched, strained tenor that improved through the afternoon. Our star-to-be, Leah Crocetto, had one small and one miniscule role as Lisa and Lay Sister respectively; I continue to hope to hear her in larger roles.

The production was magnificent, the singers rose to the occasion, but the music rarely did. A great opera does not have to have hummable, take-home-with-you big tunes to make an impact, but here the music does not make much of an impact. Yes, the final minutes, where Roxane comes to understand that it is the “ugly” Cyrano who had penned all of those wonderful letters from Christian, are quite moving, but the remainder is undistinguished. Perhaps if he had gotten lucky at just one point in his career, we might mention the name of Alfano in the same breath as Leoncavallo and Mascagni, but he didn’t and we don’t. A beta, on the strength of the production and the performances.